


Salt My Wounds

by s0lesurvivor (orphan_account)



Category: Fallout 4
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-12-07
Updated: 2015-12-29
Packaged: 2018-05-05 09:17:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 2,935
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5369948
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/s0lesurvivor
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She couldn't see past the haze. The lights were too bright; was it radiation or was it the end? And then, it grabbed her and steeled her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Mr. Brightside

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, so. Be warned the beginning of this does not contain canon story at all. I just like the setting and the characters. I hope you enjoy! <333

     She was sputtering, hands reaching for things that weren't there as her chest tightened around a shallow beating heart. Lights were popping behind the bloodshot surface of her eyes, a seering pain coursing through her veins until she was ridden with it. The way her body was laced with wounds uttered her final demise and with her head tipped skyward, Scarlett took in one last glance of the radiated sky before it all went black. 

     He found her, sucking in her last breaths, though he assumed her consciousness had already faded. It was the touch of yellow on her vault suit that caught his eyes. MacCready pulled his hat brim lower over his eyes as lingered near her body. She was so pristine, as if not a day of radiation had kissed her skin. A vault dweller, he noted. He paid his respects and was about to carry on, a lone path back to his dusty home of Goodneighbor. That was, until he caught wind of her whimpering lungs. 

     Even though his legs burned and his arms ached, veins alive with a roaring fire of discomfort, the mercenary took heavy and quick steps to the door of Goodneighbor. He used his sturdy hip to bust open the flimsy gate.

    "Get this woman a f.. Er, a stimpak!" Is all his lips could utter, pulled taunt against his scarred features. 

     The mayor of Goodneighbor, a handsome ghoul who went by the name of John Hancock, immediately rushed to their aid. He took the whimpering female from his grasp and disappeared into the wooden walls of his town hall. MacCready could do nothing, but collapse with harsh breaths in an exhaustion. He promised his son to be a better person and this was the first step: selflessness.

 

     The way his skin was pocketed, reddened flesh pulled tight over his remaining bone structure signified to the survivor that she was not in heaven. Possibly hell, but that would be too nice. No, she was alive and her first line of sight was some political wanna-be ghoul. The slim female attempted to sit up and immediately whinced in pain, her hands holding her midsection as if her guts threatened to spill out. Bandages of various sorts covered her body, she was no longer clad in the vault suit. Rather, she was in her bra and a tattered pair of leather pants. 

    MacCready heard her gasp from across the town hall, just as he was reaching for the door to depart. A knot in his chest began to form and he turned so quick on his heels he was sure the friction would burn a hole in the wooden floor. Once in the room, he eyed her from the entrance of it. The stranger's back was turned to him, despite the bandages he could still catch sight of her porcelain skin. He wasn't sure what prompted him to save this woman or what prompted him to stick around, but here he was. Her steel grey eyes catching his for the first time. A wild fire held beneath the walls of a composure he could never hold as Hancock uttered his name.

     "That's the man who got you here." 


	2. Charisma

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow, this story has been getting so much love and I just want to say thank you! It really like encourages me to post more chapters and what not. Enjoy. <3

     The eyes of the man she met with were humble, a liquid pool of deep amber. He was a bit goofy looking, not all of his teeth were exactly straight and strands of chestnut brown hair seemed to scramble outwards from beneath his hat. He was, however, a total stranger. Scarlett could say that in confidence. In her mere twenty hours outside of the vault, the only few individuals she had met with were her loyal robot servant and the group of scavengers from Concord. Which caused a putrid question to linger on her tongue, why had he brought her here and what did he want out of it? She wasn't very versed in the currency of this time period and she refused to offer him any _other_ services. The way her grey eyes were alive, feral almost must of startled the stranger because he took timed steps towards her. The way his chest was still signified to her that he was also holding his breath. 

     She looked at him as if he was the barrier between her and safety when all he truly wanted to do was get her out of harm's way. He stopped his feet about a foot in front of the female. She was small in stature, yet her energy nearly knocked him over. There was something about the pureness of her that had MacCready breathless. The meager purple and red bruise swelled onto her pink lower lip catching his attention and only after the room had grown much too quiet for his liking did he clear his throat. 

     "Uh, hi," it was a lame introduction, but he had no better idea on how to start talking. "I'm MacCready as Hancock aforementioned and well, I brought you here."

     Her composure was as firm as the brick wall that stood between her and the outside world, and after a nuclear apocalypse it can only be guessed how firm that was. Nevertheless, the black haired vixen would never let on that she was anything less than fine. With her trembling fingers folded into her lap as she swung her legs over the side of the makeshift gurney she was laid upon, she squinted up at her company. As if allowing his words to sink in. Scarlett was analyzing everything about him, from the way he stood with his shoulders slightly slumped to the way he grabbed at the back of his neck. She even noted the gentle vibrations in his honey-like voice. 

    "Scarlett," she spoke as if her name was clipped off too soon, her tone a bit rancid. It made the mercenary before her flinch and she loved it. The way her delicate tongue swept across her bruised lower lip was like a lioness hunting her pray. "I don't have any money to give you or drugs or anything of the sort."

     Behind her Hancock snorted, the way his clothes crinkled suggested he was walking towards her. Though she had expected some contact, the harshness of his textured palm on her rounded shoulder made her cringe. "My buddy here, he's a mercenary," his accent was intriguing, where had he been from before the bombs went off? Was it Boston or had he traveled some greater distance? "That means he would kill you for the two caps you had in your pockets. Obviously, you piqued his interest. Not sure if that's a good or bad thing. You would've peeked mine too, though. I must say, love." 

     MacCready watched as Scarlett brushed off the palm from her shoulder, obviously uncomfortable by what he was or what he had to say. She steeled herself and he watched her, the way her muscles tensed and her face became stricken, then she hopped off the gurney. He had to rush two steps forward to catch her, the explicit slur of curses that left her battered mouth filled the room. She was in pain and he could tell by the way she allowed her body to fall into his. If the way she acted on that gurney, tough and stand-offish was any indications of who she was, then this act in his arms was vulnerability. 

     Then as he held her, her aching body biting at her lungs, Scarlett looked up at him with pleading eyes. She was so small and fragile in this stranger's touch. "Please," she muttered. "Take me to Sanctuary, I'll pay you all the money you want when we get there. Just - get me there."


	3. The Long Haul

     Her feet, her sides, her everything was aching. Every step she took over a broken tree branch or a fallen foe made it feel as if her insides were whirling around within her, knocking into her skin and clawing at her sides. The sole survivor had a weapon readied at her hip, walking in a dark tenseness as the clouds of a radiation storm loomed overhead. The cold outside was biting at her, regardless of the road leathers she wore. (Considering her vault suit had been tattered and destroyed).

     He eyed her carefully as they trudged along a path through barren woods, his hat pulled low so even if she would look his way - which she won’t and hasn’t, she wouldn’t see the way his wide eyes questioned her. Luckily, MacCready was familiar with the small settlement named Sanctuary. The only reason being that the legendary minutemen had begun to rebuild in that very settlement. It was a hike and a half from Goodneighbor, a hike he was almost hesitant to make. The mercenary wasn’t quite sure if he was in it for the caps or the story.

     “A radiation storm is overhead,” he noted with a harsh breath as the sickeningly green clouds above them began to roll in. “If we don’t find somewhere to wait it out, we’re gonna end up like good ‘ole Hancock.”

     It was a joke and a rather distasteful one, might Scarlett add. This apocalypse, this wasteland - it was no joke. However, she couldn’t help the way the corner of her chapped lips perked up a miniscule amount. She couldn’t even begin to fathom what it was like to grow up in this world, so she was not in any position to judge someone’s coping methods. Aloud, at least.

     “Hey, lady. Uh, er, Scarlett,” MacCready hesitated before lifting a hand to grasp at the only unwounded part of her fragile physique, her elbow. He cupped the hardened portion of her slim limb and attempted to tug her from whatever sort of daydream or thought she had been sucked into. “My advice,” the dusty brunette cleared his throat to speak only after her eyes were on his. “We head over to Listening Post Bravo right down there and take shelter. I’m not in the mood to take a bath in any rads today.”

     So, they did because they both could agree that regardless of the unpleasant joke made earlier, it was true. Neither of them wanted to end up like Hancock.

     It had stung her skin as it lashed across her cheek, a ghoul much like the mayor she had previously met, but with nastier intentions. It was clear the only emotion it felt was aggression, whether that was from the rads melting its brain or the isolation. However, the basement of the listening post was crawling with them. The beast lunged and immediately floored her, a sharp pain rising up from her protruding shoulder blade as it collided with the cement floor.

     MacCready had barely any time to adjust before the woman he was escorting was ripped to the ground by what had been a sleeping feral. With eyes alive, he used the toe of his withering boot to kick the ghoul off of Scarlett after force feeding him a few rounds from his rifle. He disposed of the other two threats before kneeling beside her where she still lay. Her chest was rising in slow motions, as if counting along with the world’s slowest metronome. MacCready was in awe by the way the pain contorted her face, yet still it was flawless.

     With eyes wide, easily comparable to those of a startled fawn, Scarlett glanced over at the mercenary before her. Spikes of pain came in waves and for some reason, the dim lighting and the aching feeling in her body racked her. What had the world come to? Would she ever find her son? Avenge her husband? There on the cold and bloodied concrete flooring of a smelly basement, the dark haired woman began to cry.

* * *

 

MacCready was a dad, he was no stranger to the cure to of “booboos” and tears, even in the wasteland. However, as he knelt atop the surface she laid on and watched the tears spill down her reddened cheeks, the way her chest was no longer in rhythm, but harsh and reckless - he had no clue what to do. She was a stranger, one with a story unlike any in the Commonwealth, he was sure of it. For a moment, he contemplated leaving her there, walking away and giving her privacy to grieve for whatever she had lost.

     Contemplated is the key word here, because he could not leave her. His slender arms coaxed his rifle to the floor before he somewhat tumbled backwards to sit flat on his backend. The arms that had once babied his rifle now babied her, dragging her by her armpits into his arms.

     Scarlett did not fight the embrace, but she was unable to prevent the wince that parted her pinkish margins when he grabbed at a rough patch of skin. This was despite his efforts to be gentle, she could tell and he wearily apologized under that childish voice of his. Rather, she embraced the comforting warmth that radiated off the stranger's chest and they sat that way for at least an hour before she had finally calmed. Which prompted MacCready to ask, "What's your story?"

******  
**


	4. Fresh Wounds

     The words rang out throughout her ears and she was stuck in his arms, like a frail child at loss of its mother. How did she even begin to tell him when the wounds were just too fresh? And then, it hit her - the anger, the desperation, the grief and she decided that if any time was the time to confide in someone, now was good enough. She steeled herself, placing a hand against the round swell of his thin shoulder and used it to her advantage. She attempted to pull herself from his lap, but his grip on her was so firm. Scarlett didn't fight it, she felt too weak to and regardless it felt good to be held - platonically. "I'm 200 years old," probably wasn't a good way to start her tale, and she could tell that was true by the way MacCready scrunched up his nose.

     "You don't look like any ghoul I've ever seen, Hancock back there is the prettiest of 'em, too," he began, but he was soon hushed by a stern finger to his chattering lips. He had half expected her to laugh, yet her dark eyes catching his in hardened manner knew what she was about to tell him was no joke. Despite the fact that she was kind of in his lap, in the basement of an old war base, and she had just gotten even more stains on his tattered jacket with the smudging of her make-up. To him, it was all  _too_ humorous, but he had yet to hear of the baggage that she carried. 

     "I'm 200 years old, I had just woke up from an ice nap to find my son gone and my husband - " it choked her, the thought of her husband no longer existing upon this planet. "Oh, God. They killed him. I fell from that damn cryostasis pod and his body was right there and I thought maybe since they refroze him I could jam the controls and the shot wound would still be fresh, maybe I could've patched it." A haunting silence now surrounded the air around them, it clawed at her gut and she had to do her best not to sob. She was so  _small_ in this new world, so helpless. The only thing she was currently clinging to was the hope of seeing her baby boy again. She wanted to wrap her arms around the Shaun she once knew, but would that ever happen? Scarlett couldn't even get up off the floor of this fucking basement. 

     As if MacCready could tell that she was drowning, he attempted to float the conversation onward so at least she didn't have to think directly upon what was strangling her. "Your husband, what was his name?"

     "Nate," she breathed out his name on a sigh, the word no longer familiar on her bitter tongue. Yet a distant taste of foreign sweetness. 

     "Nate, okay," he stroked a hand along the curvature of her spine, her body began to tremble in his grasp. However, within him, it was as if a switch flipped inside him. This woman, she reminded him so much of his dear Lucy. The way she had carried herself and even the way she crumbled. It was all too familiar. So, he found himself practically dying to comfort her, shelter her small frame from the pain - even if it was coming from within. A pain he knew all too well. "I'll help you keep that name alive if you do the same for me. You see, I had a wife as well, her name was Lucy." 

    This caught Scarlett's attention, reddened eyes directing themselves upwards in the direction of her company, the warm hand of his stationed gently on her back soothed her. "Tell me about Lucy, tell me who she was."

    "She was a beautiful woman with so much love in her heart," a sigh trickled off his damaged lips and littered the room around them. "Too much love for a man like me, but da.. dang did she love me and love me good. I let her die, though. Ferals, they were on her before I could.." 

    Again, the black haired woman stopped him with a hushing digit. "Don't tell me about how she died, I want to know about how she lived."

    He smiled at that, and apparently that smile was infectious because she found herself smiling soon after that, too. "Tell me how Nate lived, then. Tell me about your son." 

     

 


End file.
